


Constant Contact

by laudanum_and_wine



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: But not demonstrably uncompliant, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post First Game, Pre-Relationship, Worship as a general theme, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:00:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24154705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_and_wine/pseuds/laudanum_and_wine
Summary: "Touch my skin so I can be myself.Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,That what died last night can be whole today."Corvo remembers a path to worship that doesn't require quite so much talking. The Outsider just likes to see his gifts used.
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Emily Kaldwin, Corvo Attano/The Outsider (Dishonored)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 73





	Constant Contact

The memory is detached from time, like remembering something when in a dream, like he always knew the way to the ocean and away from the mountains, even though he didn't remember the steps from there to here to anywhere. Like the moment underwater, after being tossed by a wave, when even in the cold caress of black water his body swung like a compass needle and suddenly up and air was a direction. (Like when in sleep the ghost of Emily stares up and tells him "You let them kill me" and he nods and remembers that, knows he did, knows he failed her, and in the dawn the memory of her death is gone but the moments when he knew it to be true are real, there, just like reality)

So Corvo woke, one morning after the world ended for months then didn't end, and he remembered something he hadn't actually ever forgotten. Something he knew had always been true, but he must not have had time to think about, must not have given himself the luxury of reliving in memory even once. So here, months later and Emily only just turned eleven last month, the court full of strange and familiar faces, he wakes up without a place to go, without an immediate meeting or task demanding his full conscious thought, and now the memory of salty lips against his own lingers. He wonders for a moment when that memory was from: he recalls the eye-ache glow of light, a shrine, purple cloth in his fist, the smell of the ocean, but all that could be anywhere. Any time in the whole last year almost.

Corvo breathes and listens to the quiet sounds of Emily waking up next door, to the tug of curtains over east facing windows then her retreat back into sleep, and is soothed by the normalcy of the sunrise. Nothing desires, nothing demands.

He wonders fleetingly if the memory was kept from him, if his lack of consideration is somehow malicious in nature. Other in nature. Was he made to forget? Was he allowed to remember? The thoughts have no immediacy though, no real drive, and so he allows the questions to wither behind his teeth and fade into nothing. 

The memory is hazy, and well worn, and sweet. He enjoys it, then sets it aside, watching the glow of dawn light the walls.

Things are busy again, and months pass easily. Emily has moved from sleeping in the room beside his own to her own suites on another floor entirely. It was her idea, and he is proud of it, of her bravery and confidence. Fear will not mar her reign he thinks, and that thought is sour, sharp like vinegar in a cut, and he exorcises it the best way he knows how: by staying too busy to think. 

For weeks after the thought he is in meetings all day, and falls to bed exhausted. He scares members of the court with black glares, tests the royal guards with sudden appearances (he finds them wanting), surprises the palace staff with unannounced inspections, until even the child empress is sick of it.

"Corvo, you made Anna cry," she stands before him, arms crossed. His prolonged silence is damning. "Anna is my maid: you didn't even know her name!"

He apologizes to Emily, then concedes to her request that he apologize to Anna as well. One hasty retreat to his chambers later, he's penned a stilted letter of apology to a chamber maid and has nothing left to do for the evening but putter about his room. Polish his sword, clean his gun. Clean his mask.

He stalks the rooftops as soon as the sun sets that night, frightening those citizens who strayed from home too late, and feels all the better for it.

The bone-cold chill before dawn finds him at a shrine, violet light a dim glow against splintering wooden walls. The residents of this ward are all gone, moved or dead, and the lamps left are dying in turn. He tidies things, clears back the dead weeds, leans his hips against the altar to look around.

"Corvo," the voice isn't surprising. It isn't anything: not warm, or cold, or loud, or quiet. It's just a word, in the deepest, coldest, darkest part of the night as streetlights sputter out in some other quarter where they'd even been lit to begin with.

Corvo removes his mask, slides it into a pocket, and spends a moment scraping his hair back with a leather cord to clear it from his eyes, feeling the sweat on his scalp and temples as ice-cold in the air. He glances over, and the god looks neither impatient nor anticipatory, not expecting a response. Corvo is historically nonresponsive.

"Feeling nostalgic, dear Corvo? You haven't used my gifts in ages, what is it which has you running over and through the filthy streets of your reclaimed city?" The god pauses, tipping his head, but continues without waiting for a reply. "I wonder if the city bores you, now that there are no more great fights to be had. Would you become a vigilante, and extension of the police force, destroying the unjust simply to find a way to vent your wrath? I cannot imagine you would stoop so low as to harm the innocent, though perhaps as the years progress you will lose that moral compass you're so fond of."

The god stares down the dim alley with him in silence for a time, before finally turning and raising an eyebrow, asking for a reply.

"Wasn't nostalgia," he says, but doesn't volunteer more.

The god sighs (actually sighs, and Corvo almost snorts out loud at the noise) then leans back to mimic the posture of the man beside him. The fabric across their shoulders brushes audibly. Corvo blinkes mutely at their shoes: his own scuffed and filthy, his companion's aged yet spotless, but both sets touching the dirty slates of the street now. They spend silent minutes in the dark. When Corvo closes his eyes, it's as though he's alone, there is no warmth, breath, no sound, no scent from the god beside him.

Finally as the chill of the air deepens Corvo turns, standing up from his slouch against the altar, and despite all odds and probabilities he finds himself looking downward into black eyes. Something moves within them, black on black, starless void writhing in shades of night. He stares, and the Void stares back.

Then Corvo smiles, and without even needing to think about it and as easy as drawing a sword, he leans in and presses a reverent kiss to the corner of his gods mouth. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment, in this prayer, and when he opens them is alone in the dark. The violet whale-oil lamp gutters and dies. Corvo straightens the cloth where his leaning tugged at it, then walks to the palace and falls into his cold bed just before dawn, smelling the ocean. 

In the late-morning he wakes and his memories are sweet. He allows himself to linger in them for whole minutes before setting them aside to begin another day of meetings and generally terrifying the palace guards. As he rises licks a thin sheen of salt from his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even go to this school?!?!?
> 
> I promise, I swear to god, I am working on my other fics. I just started thinking about whale falls, and that led to The Outsider, and I was reading Rumi, and that led here. Ooops. This is currently SFW and standalone, but if y'all like it I can try to write more.


End file.
